ODESSA — In recent times, unjustified secrecy has been the hallmark of presidencies, but journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein said President Barack Obama might be moving away from that.

Woodward and Bernstein were featured speakers Thursday at the John Ben Shepperd Public Leadership Institute’s Distinguished Lecture Series. Held at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin gym, the presentation, themed “From Nixon to Bush: What President Obama Can Learn from Presidents Past,” attracted about 1,000 people.

If the attitude of the Obama White House holds, Bernstein said, “That is a big change.”

Woodward, associate editor of the Washington Post, and Bernstein, a CNN political analyst and contributing Vanity Fair editor, broke the Watergate story, prompting the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Ultimately, both men said Watergate became a conspiracy to undermine the electoral system and the desire to retain power.

“Presidents since Nixon have banked on the system not working,” Bernstein said. “Congress will be remiss on its oversight, which was what happened in the Bush presidency. Really the last time the whole system worked, I believe was in Watergate, which is to say the press did its job, the judiciary did its job, then Congress undertook the Watergate investigation.”

Bernstein said he didn’t think he and Woodward would have done anything differently if they were covering Watergate today. He said the two got the story a piece at a time and were backed by management all the way, complete with quizzing of he and Woodward to make sure they had all their facts.

The Post national editor thought the story should be handled by his staff, and Woodward and Bernstein were continually blasted by Nixon and his press secretary for months about their stories.

“We got the story often working from the bottom up. I think there is an atmosphere today with the cacophony of all these different platforms for news (and he used the term advisedly for some outlets) of much more opinionated commentary in the guise of news.”

“In broadcast and print, there is a hellish rush to get things into print or on the Web without too much concern sometimes for accuracy or context,” Bernstein said.

With Bush, Woodward said the mistake was not vetting policy with people other than the president and vice president. Options, he said, need to be tested.

Now, Obama is having a series of meetings with top military, intelligence and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to decide whether to infuse more troops in Afghanistan.

In a classified memo reported by Woodward in the Post, a top general said more troops are needed or the mission will fail. Meeting on a Sunday morning at the Pentagon with defense officials, an editor and another reporter, Woodward said officials asked for 24 hours to go through the document and out of 30,000 words, 31 were deleted.

Instead of giving Gen. Stanley McChrystal whatever he wants, “at least there is this examination and there is not that offline channel,” Woodward said.

Bernstein, author of the Clinton biography “A Woman in Charge,” described the former first lady and current secretary of state as “remarkably able … vulnerable at times, troubled (and) passionate.”

A number of people Bernstein quoted in the biography said Clinton was angry through those presidential years — mostly at her husband.

Now, he said, she seems satisfied.

Jonathan Dumire, a UTPB political science major who ran for an at-large spot on the Midland City Council, said what Woodward and Bernstein did with Watergate completely changed the face of journalists’ relationships with presidents. Previously, journalists tended to put presidents in the best light possible.

Midland Democratic Party official David Rosen said Woodward and Bernstein were doing their seminal work when he came to the Permian Basin in 1973. “It was a very exciting time for the country. It was very interesting to see what was going to happen. Woodward and Bernstein are such renowned journalists with such great insight, I wanted to see them in person,” Rosen said.

Chris and Cory Canon came out Thursday night because of the reporters’ place in history. “They’ve lived a very fascinating life,” Chris Canon said.